I’m typing this after one week at uni, and I’ve had an amazing time. It’s weird how freshers’ week sends one’s confidence levels through the roof without you even realising. During this week, I seem to have discovered my love for clubbing; it’s something that I previously didn’t care for but I’ve found that it really is an awesome way to meet people. 

I’ve also found out that making friends is a lot easier than it first sounded, because everyone else is in the same position as you. It’s exhausting, but purely awesome. 

Yep, next week I’ll be going to a university in Nottingham to pursue my dream career, or at least attempt to. I don’t talk about this kind of stuff on Twitter because I don’t want people to know every aspect of my life in and out. Anyway, if you really wanted to know why I’ve been talking about moving and money for the past month, then you probably asked me and I told you in private. 

I’ve decided to announce this because so many people are asking questions, and I feel that it’s easier to give you the honest answer rather than leave you in the dark. Overall, I am looking forward to going, but at the same time I’m pretty nervous; making new friends is hard, and probably the hardest part of joining anything new. I like to entertain the fact that I’m a damn nice guy, and I think this will work to my advantage at university. 

One of the main killers is the financial side, and it’s what’s really been annoying me recently. Not only will I be in horrific debt, but I will be getting little to no support money from my family; they seem to expect me to live the lifestyle of a tramp, probably because of my recent extravagant spending habits. No, my family aren’t strapped for cash; in fact, I would say the situation is the exact opposite, but I’m still having to fend for myself. I find this situation upsetting not because I’m not getting money for nothing (I hate getting money I haven’t worked for - ‘handouts’), but because the attitude that a certain family member has toward me is making me feel thoroughly unloved. I’m the type of person who needs to be taught things the easy way, not the hard way, and I resent the conflict of interests in this situation. 

But hey, I love a fresh new start, and I love meeting new people, so I think I’ll have a great time when I’m up there. Of course, I’ll still be getting posts up on this website; clubbing and raving really isn’t my thing. The amount of support I get from my fans is truly flattering, and some of the people I’ve met through blogging, YouTube, and Twitter feel like my closest friends, even though I’ve never met you. I thank you all for that, and in return I shall share my experiences with you even more. 

“If you fail to prepare, you must prepare to fail.”

Other than being a neat little phrase, this actually applies to many areas in life. While a lot of people get away in life by ‘winging it’, we’re often told that it’s much better to prepare for things in order to give us the best chance. At the end of the day, this kind of thing is something that individuals must make up their own minds about; nobody has the right to tell you how to live your life, or what the boundaries of your life should be, might I add. 

I’m the kind of person who leans toward the side of ‘winging’. Having said that, I do believe that in certain cases preparation is everything, but in the majority of tests and tribulations that we will encounter in everyday life isn’t something you can plan for. After all, life isn’t an exam: you can’t revise for it. It’s all to do with dealing with pressure, and I tend to do things better when I’m driven by pressure. I get extremely irritated when people point out my faults, or tell me how I should do things, and this tends to translate itself into a passive anger, which gives me the motivation and passion to do things well. 

Fear of failure is something that everybody has; nobody likes to fail. Why is failure so feared? Well, humiliation is certainly a part of it, but failure makes you stronger. If you are willing to learn from your mistakes, then failure can be a good thing. 

This brings me back to the title of the post; true, it may be better off safe than sorry, but what I’m saying is that being sorry for something brings you back round to the very start of the argument. If you don’t prepare, you will fail, but in my view lack of preparation and subsequent failure (in any aspect of life) counts as preparation. 

I recently read a similar post to this by a friend, and felt inspired to let off a bit of steam, so to speak. I’m happy to admit that I am an unabashed optimist; no matter how bad something or a situation is, I always see the good that often is not at the end of the tunnel. The trouble with this view is that it only tends to keep oneself happy through the next 24 hours, and in some ways you could call this denial. I can always see at least one good point about a situation and use this to my advantage. That’s the main problem with this mindset I have; I constantly have to find new ways to boost my optimism and motivation, which includes twisting the truth. Many of my friends will disagree with this but I am in fact a very good liar, lol; when things go badly I tend to keep myself sane to some extent by convincing myself and others that things are nowhere near as bad as they really are. To most people, this is an unhealthy mindset, however it actually works for me. Covering up the real truth is something I’m very good at, and however unattractive this trait may be, I’m good at it and I count it as a talent (insert quip about me being an asshole here, I don’t care what you think). 

I wish I could have started out on the Internet with an entirely concealed identity, that way I could say so much more about myself without giving away information that I don’t wish to be disclosed, which is why the next part will be suitably ambiguous. I believe that to fully assess a human being (as inhumane as that is) one needs to take into account and combine every aspect of that person, whether good or bad, and provide a balanced and fair-minded judgement. Judging me on the basis that you have spoken to me only three times in the space of the three weeks I’ve been working with you and the fact you don’t know me at all is, quite frankly, fucking insulting. I’m one of those people who you need to get to know in order to find out what I’m really like, so I know instantly when people judge me having not known me. 

There are only a select few people in my life who I could call a true friend, and there are a lot of people who like to entertain the fact that they are my friend when in fact they don’t know the first thing about me. I’m a cold-hearted bastard, you may think, but I’m actually much more forgiving and (dare I say it) loving than I make out to be; being taken advantage of and lied to and persecuted by a group of people I now call my friends takes a big piece of forgiveness, huh? I thought so.

In short, this post is not designed as a cold-hearted, ambiguous attack on those individuals who are the reason I’m writing this, take from it what you want, and if you think you know to whom or what I am referring directly then it’s likely you are wrong. The vast majority of people who know me via the Internet think I have a pretty perfect life from the seemingly constant happiness I ‘radiate’, this post is to tell you that it isn’t all like that, and not to judge me by my cover; too many people have done this as of late, and it hurts. I’m sorry you had to read this, and I’m sorry I can’t be my usual happy self. Wish me luck. 

Sidebar: The weather has been pretty cold recently; typing this was a minefield of spelling errors, lol. 

I often have people coming to me for some kind of emotional support, mainly because people assume that because I’m a ‘nice guy’ I’ll be able to give a ton of advice very easily. Trouble is, people thinking I’m nice actually makes me feel very uncomfortable, as I don’t like to be considered as a nice guy; they get nowhere in life. I’ve had too many people take advantage of me, which sickens me, and that’s why I like to come over as a bit of a cold-hearted bastard. Everyone goes through stages in life where you start to feel that there is no way forward, when you’ve reached a point when your life is fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it. This has happened to me at more points in the past twenty-four months than I care to remember, but I’m always one to put on a happy face and look forward; if there’s one thing I hate it’s dwelling on the past, especially on events that I’d rather not remember. However I think it’s good to occasionally look back and reflect.

I’m pretty spontaneous, meaning that I often cannot plan things before doing them, I just go ahead and do it when I feel like doing so. I also find it very hard to motivate myself, even in things that I have an interest in. I also see no point in doing things that won’t give me a reward at the end, which makes some things in life pretty hard for me to get to grips with. People have also told me that I’m too lazy to use my brain at times, which I’ll admit to, as if I don’t see the point in doing something, I won’t give it 1% of my time or effort. Trouble with me is that anything that goes wrong in my life tends to have repercussions elsewhere, a sort of ‘knock on’ effect, if you like. Sitting next to someone who means everything to you for nearly a year with the knowledge you mean nothing to them hurts, and took a lot out of my already hard to come by motivation. Funnily enough, for a while she was the only reason I got up in the morning, lol. 

I have more online friends than real-life friends, mainly due to the fact that I can censor myself to some extent on the Internet, which is something I find hard to do in real life. I hate it when people see a side or aspect of me that I don’t want them to see or I don’t like, and the beauty of the Internet is that I can choose what parts of me people see. Sounds selfish and devious, right? Well that’s what I’m like so deal with it. 

The conclusion I want to come to here is that nobody is perfect, and nobody should expect perfection out of anybody. There will be times when you mess up, when you feel so pissed of at yourself that you feel like jumping off a bridge, but before you look at the bad, look at all the good in your life. I know no matter what I do, or how many mistakes I make, there will always be a few people out there who love me for who I am, and that makes me smile. You should think the same. As for me, well I’ll keep truckin’ through life, dodging obstacles, but sometimes hitting them, not really knowing for sure where I’m going. But if there’s something I know for sure it’s that there must be something at the end of the tunnel. 

“In order to see the rainbow, sometimes you have to get through the rain..”